Classical music listening online is an uneven experience, and now has a new champion in Deezer, the 2006-founded, French-based listening platform with 30-million users and 4-million subscribers. Deezer has launched an app in cooperation with major classical labels Deutsche Grammophon,… Continue Reading
Does Internet radio solve piracy? Let’s be clear about the question. By “Internet radio” we mean all forms of interactive listening that reflect the consumer trend to access as a new form of ownership. In other words, reaching for the… Continue Reading
Rhapsody, one of the oldest listening platforms, a subscription-only pureplay, and lately a beleaguered business wracked with internal changes, has brought new features to its Radio product. “Radio” in this context means playlists. Until now, Rhapsody has offered a suite… Continue Reading
Crossing ecosystem boundaries can be as difficult as traveling across national borders. Google Music (both the download store and the All Access streaming-music app) is soon venturing into hostile fanboy territory by distributing its service to Apple mobile users. Engadget… Continue Reading
Earbits, an indie-music Internet radio platform, has operated since late 2011 on the web and in Android mobile devices. Now it has launched its first Apple iOS app, refreshing interest in its unique artist-reward system. Promoting itself as “Independent radio… Continue Reading
RAIN’s Weekend Perspective reviews the week’s main events, and refreshes your synapses for next week. The week started with a legislative bang when Rep. Melvin Watt introduced the Free Market Royalty Act in Congress. (Just in time for a general governmental… Continue Reading
Digital single-track sales are down over the first nine months of this year, compared to the same period in 2012. The decline has accelerated quarter-over-quarter, with the July-Aug-Sep period showing a 6-percent skid, according to Billboard. Digital album sales have… Continue Reading
Muve Music is an interactive music subscription platform available exclusively to Cricket Wireless phone users on the Android platform. This narrow distribution funnel seems to work well for everyone involved, including users who have made Muve “the most popular on-demand… Continue Reading
Library music streaming: You can borrow ebooks from public libraries with an intermediary app called OverDrive. Now, a similar service has arrived for borrowing music and movies from local libraries, assisted by software app Hoopla. Hoopla stands between provider (media… Continue Reading
Google All Access expands to seven more countries: A search for this topic yields over 7,000 versions of a simple announcement: Google’s streaming and music-locker service is newly available in the Czech Republic, Finland, Hungary, Liechtenstein, the Netherlands, Russia, and… Continue Reading
In what could be characterized as a noble attempt to bridge the mass market’s preference for convenience over quality, and the audiophile’s choice of pristine audio over mobility, a Scandinavian streaming music service called WiMP has introduced lossless streaming. Lossless… Continue Reading
This morning Pandora released its monthly Audience Metrics bulletin, showing across-the-board growth in the company’s key indicators. Pandora’s reported listening hours grew to 1.36-billion, an 18% year-over-year gain from September 2012 (1.15B). Month over month, listening time marginally improved from… Continue Reading